The third
meeting with Gerald Krasner took place this evening, Tuesday 15/09/20.
Below is a report of what was said, on the
record, from a telephone conversation that lasted 27 minutes.
Progress with bids – I’ve never met with any Saudis,
just fake news, I am not down to one bidder by any means, I’ve got three, possibly
four bids, all at nearly the same stage. These are actual bids and there are
another four interested parties, one of which I spoke with in Spain, but that
lasted around seven minutes as they didn’t even know what they were buying.
The bidders
are people who have done a lot of due diligence know exactly what they’ve got
to do, talking with their lawyers, we’re at that stage. But it’s slow progress,
I don’t expect any announcements this week. If it changes we’ll put it on the
website.
With regards
to the new bidders, it’s the nature of the beast, people coming in at the last
minute, we only had one bidder early, they went when we got relegated, then I
had to sort out the Yeung debt, £25 million, nobody wanted to touch us with
that. That was going to cost another £6
million @25p in the £. That delayed serious bidding, we got a lot of interest
but that delayed serious bidding until August. None of this helps of course,
just telling you the facts behind it.
You can’t
generalise on what may hold up negotiations, they are all different , some are
poker faced, whist other sit there with a big smile on their face, you know,
you are dealing with human beings who will go at their own time, the worst
thing to do is to pressurise them.
Debt – We have got enough money to settle
the football debt of £6.4 million, a lot of that has been paid already, that’s
why we don’t have a lot of money because we’ve used it to pay off the football
debt, which we can’t sell the club with, when we sell the club we still have to
pay £1.3 million to save 15 point deduction this season, if we don’t get enough
money we won’t be able to pay that, in addition the loss in administration of
£3 million+
We’re asking
£3m for that stadium, which has got to be worth £10m of anybody’s money, we’re
asking half a million for the training ground and half a million for Sharpey’s.
None of that is expensive, none of it is overpriced, we’re asking a pound for
the football club, that’s definitely cheap, but that £ is only if the rest of
it gets sold first.
You can’t
cherry pick, it’s a package deal, in fact we’d even let it go without Sharpey’s
for £3.5m and we’d sell that separately. The important bit is the stadium with
the football club.
Incentive to sell rather than
liquidate - None of
the legal or administrators cost are being charged to the football club, now
when I say no legal costs, the cost of the appeal (EFL) will have to be charged
to the football club, our costs and the others are being charged to the property
sales.
We owe £1.3m
to creditors and the football club owes about £3m in PAYE and VAT, we haven’t hit
the end of the quarter yet, this debt is our responsibility. Whoever picks up
the club as no liabilities whatsoever to football or creditors except for TUPE,
which is taking over the employment rights of people employed at the club. So basically
the new owners would be starting with a clean slate.
John Sheridan – The manager should stick with the
football and we should stick with the administration and we shouldn’t try to do
each others jobs. So if we need a manager we will appoint a manager.
Price for club - We’ve been negotiating for weeks and
now we’re at £4m, if we get it wrong we are answerable to the high court.
Dean Watson – He went to the match because he
wanted to go, he was asked on Friday if he was going then changed his mind, he
drove there and back in the same day and put the petrol in out of his own
money.
Transfer Fees - We will do a report, though we won’t
break the transfer fees down individually, we will say what we’ve received for
players sales and how we’ve spent it, so far we’ve spent quite a bit of it on keeping
the players and paying their wages.
Time Scale - Can’t see anything happen this week,
it’s Tuesday evening and unless someone moves over night, I don’t think it will
be until next week that it moves.
The next
step is we could have a signed contract by Friday morning, but the next step is
a big one. That is singing that contract and dumping the money in their lawyers
account. Then it has to go to the EFL and that takes three weeks, but once I’ve
got a signed contract which is subject only to the EFL, we can then start
putting pressure on them.
The transfer
window shuts on 5th October and once it shuts it’s shut, the buyers
know this. The consolidation of the club and making sure they don’t get
relegated is what it’s about this season.
When I came
in on the 1st July I had 28 days to find £1m or the players would
have walked. I haven’t done everything I set out to do, I wanted it sold by the
end of July, I’m upset that didn’t happen, but you can’t force someone to sign
a contract but what we have done is paid all the wages up to the end of August,
done the deal with Mr Yeung, in record time and we finished last season, thanks
to the Supporters’ Club. That is remarkable given what I know that has managed
to happen. Fans are just going to have to be patient, I’m not going to be
forced into doing something we’ll all regret later on.
The figures
have to balance.
